Seismologist Was Forced to Remove Italy Earthquake Warning From the Internet

After an earthquake in the Abruzzo region of Italy killed at least 100 people, a local scientist is demanding an apology from authorities and saying that he was forced to take his warnings off the Internet.

Associated Press

A car is covered with debris and rubble following the earthquake in central Italy April 6.

A week ago, Gioacchino Giuliani (some news reports are calling him Giampaolo Giuliani), a seismologist at the nearby Gran Sasso National Laboratory, predicted that a large quake could occur soon after several small tremors. According to Reuters, his warning prompted vans with loudspeakers telling residents to leave their homes.

Authorities, however, told locals that the tremors were not unusual, accused Mr. Giuliani of “spreading alarm” and forced him to take his findings off the Internet.

After the quake, Mr. Giuliani demanded an apology for the denouncement. He told an Italian news outlet that “there are people out there who should be offering me apologies — and whose conscience should bear the full weight of what has happened.”

His comments and expertise are the subject of much discussion on Italian-language sites. A late-March interview on Italian political blog Donne Democratiche shows more than 50 comments, most posted early today. An interview with Mr. Giuliani, in Italian, remains on YouTube, where it has been viewed more than 89,000 times and received more than 400 comments, most of them in Italian.

L’Aquila, a medieval town about 60 miles northeast of Rome, was at the epicenter of the earthquake. In addition to the death toll, the quakes and tremors damaged as many as 15,000 buildings and left tens of thousands of people homeless, Italian official said.